Our in no way emotionally disturbed President tweeted the following a few days ago:

As it happens I have been doing a lot of research lately on international public opinion about the U.S. and came across a few articles that suggest, not surprisingly, that the President is dead wrong about the image of the U.S. CNN projects internationally.  The first article addresses how the election of Barack Obama changed German public opinion about the U.S.  The authors find that the election of Obama did positively influence opinion about the U.S. in Germany.  In their control variables they included a measure for how and where the individual responded received information.  They found that people who got their information about the U.S. from CNN had an overall more positive image of the U.S. than those who didn’t:

The second article examines the role media and education have in anti-americanism in 9 Muslim countries.  One of their pertinent findings for our purposes is that people who get their news from CNN have a more favorable view of the U.S. than people who get their news only from Al Jazeera only or both Al Jazeera and CNN.

Donald Trump is wrong about the international effect of CNN.  This wouldn’t be such a big deal except that the President’s attempt to delegitimize CNN is having pernicious effects abroad: